Development of MOF-Derived Carbon-Based Nanomaterials for Efficient Catalysis

Carbon-based nanomaterials have been widely used as catalysts or catalyst supports in the chemical industry or for energy or environmental applications due to their fascinating properties. High surface areas, tunable porosity, and functionalization are considered to be crucial to enhance the catalytic performance of carbon-based materials. Recently, the newly emerging metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) built from metal ions and polyfunctional organic ligands have proved to be promising self-sacrificing templates and precursors for preparing various carbon-based nanomaterials, benefiting from their high BET surface areas, abundant metal/organic species, large pore volumes, and extraordinary tunability of structures and compositions. In comparison with other carbon-based catalysts, MOF-derived carbon-based nanomaterials have great advantages in terms of tailorable morphologies and hierarchical porosity and easy functionalization with other heteroatoms and metal/metal oxides, which make them highly efficient as catalysts directly or as catalyst supports for numerous important reactions. In this perspective, we intend to give readers a survey of the research advances in the use of MOFs as self-sacrificing templates and precursors to prepare carbon-based nanomaterials, mainly including heteroatom-doped porous carbons and metal/metal oxide decorated porous carbons for applications as catalysts in energy and environment-related electrocatalysis and traditional heterogeneous catalysis. Finally, some perspectives are provided for future developments and directions of MOF-derived carbon-based materials for catalysis.